Chapter 1: Between the sea and the stars

Every time the phone rang at Lyman Smith's house in the late winter of
1980, the caller asked The Question.

The Question certainly was poised on the tip of Isabelle Doyle's
tongue as she dialed the couple just after nightfall on Thursday, March
13.

Lyman Smith answered the phone with a mouthful of food.

"What are you two up to?" she began.

"We're snackin'," he told her, amiable as always.

"Is the boss home?" she teased.

Lyman handed the phone to his wife, Charlene, and Isabelle wasted no
time posing The Question.

"Have you heard from the governor yet?"

"No, that Gov. Brown will take forever," Charlene answered, ever the
spitfire.

Charlene invited Isabelle to visit the new condominium she was
decorating. A previous commitment forced Isabelle to decline.

"That's OK, Mom," Charlene said. She called her Mom even though
Charlene had divorced Isabelle's son years earlier.

They said their goodbyes and hung up.

It was possible the Smiths' killer was at that moment out in the
darkness, watching Charlene through the kitchen window.

Isabelle would later tell the Ventura Police Department it sounded
like they were alone in the house and nothing was wrong.

The phone conversation occurred just before one of the most brutal
and baffling crimes in Ventura County history.

It occurred before detectives obsessed over drapery cord and granny
knots, before they followed the blood spatters and scrutinized stomach
contents.

Before the embarrassing questions about Charlene's love affair.
Before the money trails of Lyman's many deals had to be followed.

Before the minister told his tale of a confession.

Before the arrest and then one of the longest court hearings in
Ventura County history.

Before the district attorney made his surprise decision.

Before the bitter resignation set in that this crime might never be
solved.

All of that was before investigators discovered 20 years later the
killer had left behind a silent witness.

There is still one more thing to know: What is the name of the man
who killed Charlene and Lyman Smith?

But when the once-silent witness identifies him beyond a shadow of a
doubt, his name will finally be known.

* * *

On this clear, moonless night, Lyman and Charlene Smith of High
Point Drive seemed on top of the world. They had reached for the stars,
and the brightest was almost in their grasp.

Lyman, at 43 years old, was on Gov. Jerry Brown's short list for a
seat on the Ventura County Superior Court. A loyal Democrat and a
member of a state DMV board, he expressed supernatural confidence he
would hear his name when the judgeships were announced in the coming
days.

Charlene, 10 years his junior, was spreading her wings as well.
After years of toiling as a legal secretary, she had quit to pursue her
dream of being an interior decorator. On the side, she sold gold
jewelry and cosmetics through Tupperware-style parties at friends'
homes.

The Smiths lived on a hill above Ventura on a street lined by
2,000-square-foot ranch houses, each straining for the most panoramic
view to the sea.

From this perch, they saw past the acres of orange groves, over the
strip malls and beyond the tiny, sun-baked stucco homes that housed the
oil-field workers and military retirees.

Nearby and down the hill lived Lyman's former wife and the three
children from that marriage. Higher up on the hill lived the county's
presiding judge.

No one doubted Lyman would make a good judge. The former prosecutor
possessed an even temperament and a nimble mind.

In fact, two words always come up when anyone described Lyman --
pleasant and ambitious.

It was the great paradox of Lyman Smith. He was by no accounts a
hustler, always on the make. He was not a man with a slippery handshake
or a guy who engaged a person in conversation only to check the door to
see if someone more important entered the room.

In fact, he could turn chameleon in a social setting, able to be
whatever anyone wanted. Some remember him as an Ivy League type, others
as a good old boy; still others found him thoughtful. His son, Gary,
recalls getting up in the middle of the night and finding his father
engrossed in a book.

If the definition of a gentleman is the person who makes the fewest
people in the room uncomfortable, by that measure Lyman was a
gentleman.

But he sought to be another kind of gentleman -- a man of
independent means.

Lyman liked deals. "Pots of gold at the end of the rainbow Lyman put
together" is the way Judge Steven Stone, his former law partner,
summarized his eclectic portfolio.

He leaned toward unusual enterprises that set his closest friends to
scratching their heads. There was Maverick International, an airline
dedicated to flying pregnant cows to Iran. He owned part interest in an
avocado ranch and in an innovative own-your-own-lot manufactured-home
development in Santa Paula.

This was California, after all, where trends are born. A San Jose
advertising man made himself a fortune in 1975 hawking the Pet Rock, a
fad that had otherwise sane people forking over $4 for an over-packaged
pebble. Lyman's taste in investments was more Pet Rock than
savings-and-loan passbook.

* * *

Lyman Smith was a solidly built man of average height, who, if not
blessed with an even disposition, might have been a scrapper. At times
in his life, he carried a bit more weight than ideal -- attributed to
his abiding love of Mexican food. But friends said he found a partial
antidote for the burrito bulk in golf.

He was a nice-looking man with brown eyes and sandy brown hair. But
if you saw him with Charlene Doyle Smith, you might think to yourself
"that guy must have money," the way you do when you spot a gorgeous
woman on the arm of an older man who fails to match his escort's
stunning looks.

Charlene was described by Lyman's best friend, Hal Barker, as "a
goin' Jessie" -- the whole package: beauty, style, vitality and sex
appeal.

Lyman's former secretary, Charlene matched his intense energy and
understood what drove him. They had both been raised in modest
circumstances. And while neither forgot their roots, they wanted the
best life had to offer.

Lyman grew up in a converted Quonset hut in an almond orchard on the
outskirts of Sacramento.

He was born a descendant of Mormon farmers in Pocatello, Idaho, on
April 7, 1936, to Lyman Jones Smith and the former Wilma Belle
Shappart. Lyman Jr. did not grow up in that faith. Although his
grandfather had been a Mormon bishop, Lyman Sr. left the religion and
never told his sons why.

During the Depression, Lyman Sr. repaired refrigerators on railroad
produce cars. With Idaho's fields yielding but one annual harvest, he
spent most of the year laid off.

The boss said if he wanted steady work he'd have to transfer to
California, where each month brought a new crop. So in 1945, the Smiths
moved 9-year-old Lyman and 1-year-old Don to Citrus Heights, a
then-uncrowded, agricultural community outside the state capital.

When Wilma's health began to fail, little Don was sent back to Idaho
in the summers to stay with family, while Lyman stocked grocery
shelves.

Cancer claimed Wilma in 1956; she was 47. Her long illness took what
little money the family had.

Despite these sad circumstances, Lyman thrived. He was elected
student body president at San Juan High School, where he won the
school's lying contest. His tall tale centered around going duck
hunting in the fog, firing at what he thought was a deer and landing a
striped bass.

Some would call it good practice for an aspiring attorney. After
graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Lyman attended
Boalt Hall School of Law at Berkeley on a scholarship. A quick study,
he found time to play cards in the lounge with his friend, and future
Ventura County judge, Bill Peck.

They tried to best each other at a game called Smoke, where players
prevaricate shamelessly about the cards they hold.

Lyman came to Ventura County in 1961 as a pudding-faced go-getter
for the District Attorney's Office run by the no-nonsense Woody Deem.
Deem, a straight-arrow Mormon married to a former Marine Corps
recruitment poster girl, raided California's best law schools for fresh
and cheap talent.

Only two years earlier, Ventura County was put on the legal map by
Elizabeth "Ma" Duncan. The psychopathic mother-in-law from hell
arranged the murder of her pregnant daughter-in-law, Olga. Ventura
County prosecutors won the convictions of Ma and the two thugs she
hired to dispatch Olga, whom Ma considered a rival for the affections
of her mama's-boy son, Frank.

Figuring Ventura County might grant him sound trial experience,
Lyman moved from Sacramento with his wife, Marjorie. The daughter of an
appliance store owner, she had been his high school sweetheart and
helped put Lyman through school by working as a secretary and dental
assistant.

Deem expected his young hires to move on after a couple of years.
When one recruit stayed past two years, Deem asked him, "What's the
matter? Can't you find a job?"

Lyman exited Deem's revolving door in less than two years to join a
Santa Paula law firm in need of trial talent.

Even from sleepy Santa Paula, Lyman kept up his high profile. He was
county chairman of Lyndon Johnson's '64 presidential campaign. LBJ's
landslide extended to Ventura County, although conservative Barry
Goldwater did manage to take Camarillo.

Lyman showed all the signs of being a born politician, a knack
inherited from his gregarious father. He was elected a trustee of the
Santa Paula Union High School District and sat on the boards of the
Santa Paula Boys Club, the Santa Paula Rotary and the Ventura County
Bar Association.